The FBI Story ***½ (1959, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Murray Hamilton) – Classic Movie Review 6,658

The 1959 thriller film The FBI Story stars James Stewart as Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Chip Hardesty. The FBI controlled every move and the production had J Edgar Hoover breathing down their neck constantly. In many ways, it was his production. 

Producer-director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1959 American thriller film The FBI Story stars James Stewart as Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Chip Hardesty, who looks back over a career in which he battles the Ku Klux Klan, mobsters Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, and Nazi spies.

Since The FBI Story plays like a Fifties advertisement for cosy Eisenhower-era domesticity and of course the FBI, it is a rather reactionary movie, and the scenes of home life with Vera Miles as Hardesty’s poor long-suffering wife Lucy Ann are frankly tedious, wasting this fine Hitchcock actress.

But that apart, this is a good solid, convincing crime thriller held together by a particularly strong and robust performance from Stewart. LeRoy does well to keep up the momentum of a long, episodic movie. The screenplay by Richard L Breen and John Twist, based on the 1956 book The FBI Story: A Report to the People by Don Whitehead, purports to be telling the true history of the FBI, but that is largely specious, though the Jack Graham airliner bombing story is mostly accurate, even using his real name.

Also in the cast are Murray Hamilton, Larry Pennell, Nick Adams, Diane Jergens, Jean Willes, Joyce Taylor, Victor Millan, Parley Baer, Faye Rooper, Robert Gist, Ed Prentiss, Buzz Martin, Kenneth Mayer, Ann Doran, Burt Mustin, John Damler, Jeanne Dante, Angelo De Meo, Sayre Dearing, and Dorothy Neumann.

William Phipps plays Baby Face Nelson, Scott Peters plays John Dillinger and Bob Peterson plays Pretty Boy Floyd, with Stacy Keach Sr as Machine Gun Kelly and Jane Crowley as Ma Barker.

Naturally, the FBI controlled every move and the production had J Edgar Hoover breathing down their neck constantly. In many ways, it was his production. He influenced the casting and got his personal friend LeRoy to re-shoot several scenes he thought portrayed the FBI inappropriately. Hoover had approval over every frame of the film and assigned two special agents to be with LeRoy for the entire filming. Hoover even appears briefly as himself. It was the J Edgar Hoover Show. It is hard not to see it as heavy-handed propaganda rather than an exciting film thriller.

It took an estimated $3.5 million at the US/ Canada box office.

It was released in October 1959.

Talking Hitchcock, Stewart starred in Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window and Vertigo. and Miles starred in The Wrong Man and Psycho.

The FBI Story is directed by Mervyn LeRoy, runs 149 minutes, is a Warner release, is written by Richard L Breen and John Twist, based on the book The FBI Story: A Report to the People by Don Whitehead, is shot in Technicolor by Joseph F Biroc, is produced by Mervyn LeRoy, and is scored by Max Steiner.

The cast are James Stewart as John Michael “Chip” Hardesty, Vera Miles as Lucy Ann Hardesty, Murray Hamilton as Sam Crandall, Larry Pennell as George Crandall, Nick Adams as John Gilbert “Jack” Graham, Diane Jergens as Jennie Hardesty, Jean Willes as Anna Sage, Joyce Taylor as Anne Hardesty, Victor Millan as Mario, Buzz Martin as Mike Hardesty (USMC), Kimberly Beck as Jennie Hardesty (at age 2), J Edgar Hoover as himself, Special Agent Lewis Gene Libby as FBI agent, Eleanor Audley as Graham’s mother, Parley Baer, Faye Rooper, Robert Gist, Ed Prentiss, Buzz Martin, Kenneth Mayer, Ann Doran, Burt Mustin, John Damler, Jeanne Dante, Angelo De Meo, Sayre Dearing, Dorothy Neumann, William Phipps as Baby Face Nelson, Scott Peters as John Dillinger, Bob Peterson as Pretty Boy Floyd, Stacy Keach Sr as Machine Gun Kelly, and Jane Crowley as Ma Barker.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,658

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